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Pain Profile and Management

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a leading cause of disability globally, and knee pain itself is on the rise. Musculoskeletal pain, of which OA is a common cause, is the single most common type of chronic pain. Symptomatic treatment of pain related to OA is only moderately effective, with joint replacement surgery being the only definitive treatment presently available. The experience of pain is widely variable between individuals, with a well-recognized “structure-symptom” discordance reported in the literature. Increasingly, the multifactorial nature of pain is being understood, providing important insights into potential pain treatment targets.Current knowledge of risk factors for pain in OA are enabling pain phenotyping of individuals, thereby laying the foundation for studies of prognosis and response to treatment of the various pain phenotypes, which in turn will support eventual mechanism-based treatment of pain in OA